The irrelevant speech effect states that speech in the background during a recall task will cause disruption in memory because the irrelevant verbal input interferes with the relevant task at hand. The current experiment was designed to test whether background music impedes memory in a manner akin to the way that irrelevant speech does. In theory, music should only impede memory if it occupies the same facilities as the verbal task. Therefore, the music in the background of a verbal task would be more distracting to those with musical proficiency because they are hypothesized to process music linguistically. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that irrelevant speech in the background would be as distracting as the music to the musicians but more distracting than the music to non-musicians. Although hypotheses were not supported, an overall effect of musical ability was demonstrated such that high-musical ability participants seem to have an overall advantage on all verbal tasks.